Bernardo Siciliano

New York, January 7, 2010 – In the four years since his last exhibition at Forum Gallery, Bernardo Siciliano has continued his intensive concentration on luminous urban landscapes and bold and compelling figurative painting. In the shape of the city that surrounds him and in the striking portraits of its people, he expresses the strength and dynamic beauty of his subjects.

Siciliano has always thought the figure to be the most important and challenging subject matter for any artist. His human figures portray their vulnerability, as the viewer becomes privy to the intimate interaction between the painter and his subject. The artist’s experience as a photographer emerges in these stunning life-size portraits: each figure is tense and cinematic, as though poised to move at any moment. Close inspection of the canvas reveals that each crisp figure is comprised of an endless number of carefully chosen colors and bold paint strokes.

Equally arresting, Siciliano’s cityscapes explore the lush geometry of the city surrounding the artist’s downtown home and Brooklyn studio. Since his move from Italy, Siciliano has been inspired by what he describes as the “violent, blinding, gritty” light specific to his adopted New York City. In Siciliano’s cityscapes the objects are defined in paint by blocks of color. The surfaces of these canvases are rough, tactile, and marked by the definitive strokes of the artist’s paintbrush.